BOSTON, MA — On Friday, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a series of rulings in Delgado v. Galvin, rejecting defendants' efforts to dismiss parts of the case, adding MassHealth as a defendant, and broadening the inquiry into the statewide failure of Massachusetts public assistance offices to provide federally required voter registration services to the Commonwealth's low-income citizens.
A recent ProPublica article points to a number of pending lawsuits aimed at restoring key federal protections against racial voting discrimination. Up until last summer, certain states and jurisdictions with histories of preventing African Americans from voting were forced to have all election changes cleared by the federal government before implementation.
Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” But it's not just economists who believe that anymore. Such ideas are still widely accepted by thought leaders, journalists, and politicians who, together, form a strong consensus that the U.S. recovery should be bolstered by natural gas exploration and production.
Much of the rancor around why they opposed Debo Adegbile for heading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been about Mumia Abu-Jamal. But it seems from their line of questioning that there’s also an agenda to undermine the Civil Rights Divisions’ duties to enforce voting rights and protect Americans against discrimination.
For higher education and student debt, this year’s budget mostly includes proposals we’ve seen from the Obama administration in previous budgets, speeches, or elsewhere.
Shaun McCutcheon doesn’t like that there is a cap on the total amount of money that one person is permitted to contribute to federal candidates, parties, and political-action committees. And he is hoping that, someday soon, the Supreme Court will grant his wish by striking these limits when it rules on his case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
"No one who works full-time should have to raise their children in poverty," Senator Barbara Boxer said. She was talking about raising the minimum wage during aspeech to the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition to citing the moral reason the federal minimum wage deserves a second look, she also made an economic argument. "When working people have a little more in their paychecks, they spend a little more in their communities. So that's what we're trying to do," she added.
As we await a decision from the Supreme Court in the McCutcheon v. FEC money in politics case, the Justices themselves heard from a protester who rose in the courtroom to proclaim that “money is not speech, corporations are not people” and to urge the Court to “overturn Citizens United.”
The ink is barely dry on the report from President Obama’s election administration commission and states are already disregarding its blue-ribbon recommendations, namely around early voting. The endorsement of expanding the voting period before Election Day was one of the strongest components of the bipartisan commission’s report.
If you think wage theft is being overblown by worker advocates, as some business groups suggest, check out this outrageous story.
Last week, Philadelphia restaurant franchise Chickie's & Pete's agreed to pay employees around $8.6 million in back wages to settle a Department of Labor (DOL) investigation and several lawsuits brought by employees past and present.
Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would increase the price of a $16 product at Walmart, such as the typical DVD, by just a cent if all of the extra costs were passed on to consumers, according to an analysis by an economist for Bloomberg News. [...]
The odds that Republican House Speaker John Boehner will allow a vote on raising the minimum wage remain as low as ever, but some large retailers are already raising the wage on their own initiative. On Wednesday, clothing chain Gap Inc. announced it would be raising its base wage from $9 to $10 per hour next year, directly benefiting as much as 72% of its hourly workforce.
The good folks at Demos, led by the redoubtable Liz Kennedy, have produced yet another study, this one outlining strategies to roll back the laws passed out in the country aimed at restricting the franchise of groups of people that conservatives and Republicans would rather not have voting, thank you very much.
Ohio is not new to voter suppression. In fact, the swing state might be considered a vanguard, considering its calamities during recent election cycles.
CRANSTON, R.I. — Local residents joined the ACLU of Rhode Island today to sue the City of Cranston, charging that the 2012 redistricting plan for the City Council and School Committee violates the one person, one vote principle of the U.S. Constitution by counting incarcerated people in their prison location as if they were all residents of Cranston.
Walmart is denying a Bloomberg report that said the nation's largest private employer is considering supporting an increase in the minimum wage.
"We are not at all considering this," Walmart spokesman David Tovar told The Huffington Post Wednesday afternoon, just after Bloomberg published the story. [...]
16 policies and practices that would make registration more accessible and seamless, lead to more effective and efficient election administration, and strengthen protections for voters’ rights.